Chapter 5 Noah
Noah
Iyanked the shower curtain shut again.
“Sorry, I thought you were asking if I was decent,” Emma said at the same time that I said, “Sorry, I thought you were turned around already.”
She let out a tortured groan. “You must think I’m a pervert.”
“Yes.”
The groan turned into a strangled guffaw. “I’m so sorry.”
“Not your fault. It was a miscommunication. Now are you turned around?”
The sound of motion. “I am.”
I peeked my head out just to be sure, and the sight of her standing there, absolutely swamped in my clothes, did something to me, made some smug masculine instinct crow with satisfaction.
This is only temporary, I told myself. You don’t get to keep her.
I snagged my towel and quickly dried myself off, pulling on a pair of old gray sweats over my boxers, and a white Henley.
“Good,” I told Emma.
She didn’t move.
“You okay over there?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve put myself in time-out. Three minutes left.”
I chuckled and let her be, going about my normal after-shower routine like this was any other night and not the craziest one of my life.
I combed my hair, put on deodorant, and patted some moisturizer onto my face.
A decent-looking guy stared back at me in the mirror.
Brown hair, brown eyes, three-day stubble.
My nose had been too big for my face when I’d been younger, and my ears a tad too large, but I’d grown into both, and now my features looked much more balanced.
“You hungry?” I asked, turning toward Emma.
She swiveled my way, her time-out over. “Starving.”
I reached past her toward the door handle, pausing. “I just realized. If you haven’t eaten solid food in almost a week, we might have to be careful with what we put in your stomach.”
Her face fell. “Oh, you’re probably right.”
“I’ll look it up. Here,” I said, offering my arm. “Hold on to me and the railing on the way down. You still look a little wobbly.”
We made it safely to the kitchen, and I got her seated on a barstool at the center island while I scrolled through an article about refeeding someone after a period of starvation, reading aloud to her the critical points.
Afterward, I went to the fridge. “I have leftover beef stew from last night. I could heat that up and put it through the blender. It has everything you need, low carbs, high protein, nutrient dense.” I glanced over my shoulder at Emma. “Thoughts?”
She sat beneath the glow of a pendant light, towel drying her hair. “Mmm, a meat smoothie. Sounds delicious.”
I grinned. “I got other options.”
She shook her head. “No, that sounds fast, and I’m so hungry I’m starting to get lightheaded, so let’s go with that.”
“Two meat smoothies, coming up.”
“Wait, what? No, you don’t have to drink one, too.”
I pulled the Tupperware out of the fridge. “I can’t in good conscience let you do this alone. It just doesn’t feel right, serving you something I wouldn’t eat myself.”
I popped the container in the microwave and let it heat up while I snagged the blender from a lower cabinet. A few minutes later, I poured the steaming mixture into two ceramic tankards and popped a couple of glass straws in them.
“Cheers,” Emma said, holding her smoothie up.
We clinked glasses, paused to steady ourselves, and then each took a tentative sip.
Emma frowned as she swallowed. “I don’t know if being in a coma messed with my taste buds, but this isn’t half bad.”
I swallowed my own mouthful. It tasted just like a good helping of beef stew. “You know, I’d even go so far as to say it’s decent.”
I set mine on the counter and pushed my sleeves to my elbows, getting ready to clean up the dishes.
Emma’s eyes dropped to my forearms, and her cheeks pinked again.
I glanced down, wondering what had caused the reaction, but it was just my forearms, maybe a little more vascular than normal because of .
. . oh. Was that it? Was Emma a forearm girl?
I flexed a little, and she wrenched her gaze away.
I turned around, my head spinning.
Nope. Do not. Don’t go there, brain, I begged myself.
Silence fell while I rinsed the Tupperware and set it in the dishwasher. That done, I filled the blender with soapy water to soak and finished my smoothie.
Emma managed to drink half of hers before stopping herself. “I think that’s probably good for now. I don’t want to overdo it and get sick.”
“Smart,” I said, taking it from her.
I thought about dumping the rest, but I was still hungry, and not wanting it to go to waste, I took a deep pull from the straw. Her eyes dropped to my mouth, watching me, and I wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was: that our lips had now touched the same spot.
Pink crept back into her cheeks again, and she dropped her gaze to where her hands were clasped on the countertop. “I remember you. From high school. You were always really nice.”
“So were you,” I said.
She shook her head. “I could have been nicer. I was too fixated on my own friend group and all our drama. I didn’t do a good enough job standing up for other people. Like you did.”
I shrugged. “I was big, even back then. And people were already wary of me because of where I lived and what my parents did for work. It made it easy to put myself between other kids and their bullies.”
“Still, I admired you for it,” she said, sneaking a glance up at me. “I wish I would have said something back then, but I didn’t, so I’m saying it now.”
I nearly laughed. If she only knew all the things I’d wanted to say to her back then. “Thank you.”
I finished the rest of her drink and put our glasses in the dishwasher. The stove clock said it was eleven, well past my bedtime, but I was still wound up from tonight’s events, and I was guessing from Emma’s nervous energy that she might be, too.
“Are you okay sleeping alone, or do you want me in the room with you?”
She winced. “I’ll be okay.”
“Emma.”
“No, you’ve done too much already. I . . . I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
“Okay, it’s settled. You’re sleeping in my room with me. You can take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor by the door, so you’ll know that no one can get to you without going through me.”
She sent me a watery smile. “Thank you.”
I nodded. “There’s a TV up there if you want to watch something first. Or we can talk more.”
“TV sounds good,” she said, lifting back up. “I think I’m done talking for the night. I don’t think I can absorb any more horrible details right now.”
“Fair enough.”
She waited for me by the bottom of the stairs while I checked the doors and windows on the first floor to make sure they were locked.
Together, we headed up, stopping in the bathroom to brush our teeth, me with my electric version, her with a brand-new regular one that I’d stored for guests.
It was nice, comforting, our arms brushing together every now and then, our gazes catching in the mirror.
It made me realize how long I’d been alone, and how nice it felt to not be for once.
Afterward, we headed into my room, and I was just reaching for the light switch when Emma stopped me.
“Wait, what is that?” she said, wandering toward my bed. She paused just beside it and looked up. “Oh, wow.”
Right above her was the large skylight I’d had installed two years ago to brighten the room.
It doubled as a stargazing window, perfect because this far out in the boonies, there was hardly any light pollution.
I joined Emma and looked up to see the Star-Crossed Lovers perfectly framed within the glass, so close now they were almost touching.
“I almost forgot about them,” she said. “Wait, if they’re about to meet, then”—she looked to me—“is it Valentine’s Day?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Uh. Yeah.”
“He buried me on Valentine’s Day?”
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled, wincing.
She plopped down on the edge of the mattress, looking like a marionette whose strings had been cut. “Damn, he really hated me.”
“Impossible,” I said, sitting beside her. “He actually hates himself. Men like him can never face their own flaws, so you, with all your light and laughter and love, became the target of that self-hatred.”
She looked over at me. “Why are you so wonderful?”
“I’m not. I’m decent, at best. The bar, as we’ve already established, is just in hell.”
She leaned forward, her hands framing my face. “No. You, Noah Evans, are my hero. You literally saved me tonight.” She shook my face, looking slightly deranged. “Accept my praise, damn it.”
I chuckled and pulled free. “All right, all right.”
Her gaze went back to the skylight. “Can we sit and watch them for a while instead of TV?”
“Sure, we can.”
She crawled toward the headboard, tripping over her oversize clothing. When she was settled against the pillows, she patted the spot beside her in invitation. “It’s even better from this angle.”
Yup, a beautiful woman in my bed had just said that sentence to me, so of course my mind tried to turn it into something dirty.
I strangled the thought before it could fully form and crawled up the mattress next to her.
She was right, the view was better from here, especially when you sank down low and rested your head against the pillows.
“When was the last time this happened?” I asked. “Wasn’t it on another Valentine’s Day?”
“Yes, in 1986. The astronomers claimed it wasn’t supposed to happen again, but the universe had other plans, and now the Star-Crossed Lovers are getting their second chance at love,” she said, quoting the lines that had been continuously repeated across the internet in the months leading up to this.
Coming from her, they sounded less cheesy and more romantic.
Maybe it was her tone, soft, reverent, like even after all she’d been through, she still believed in love.
She settled deeper into the pillows at my side, turning a little toward me. “Can you . . .”
I waited a beat for her to finish the sentence, but she shook her head. “Can I what?”
“Never mind, it’s stupid.”
“Say it anyway, so I can make fun of you.”